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Notes -
US military offers immigrants fast track to citizenship in effort to boost recruiting
I have some thoughts about this.
First, this looks suspiciously like textbook "How to lose your empire in five easy steps" guide:
Have your citizens grow fat, lazy and unwilling to risk their lives, especially in far away wars that they see no benefit from anyway
Hire strong and hungry barbarians to serve in the imperial military
Have the barbarians realize they are now doing most of the work holding up the empire together, while not getting commensurate benefits, which go to the fat and lazy citizens instead
Have the barbarians take over the reigns of power
The empire suffers bouts of "bad luck"
The historians write "Decline and fall of the $EMPIRE"
(Side note: since we live in the clown world, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that the word "barbarian" is used in purely descriptive, not pejorative, meaning - as "somebody who is not part of the imperial culture" - and, in fact, for the purposes of this definition, I am a barbarian myself and many of my friends are Barbarian-Americans)
Second, we have been actively sold the notion that DIE efforts in the military are vital if we want to keep the recruiting targets and the strength of the military. I do not see this idea being empirically confirmed, and what is even worse - I am not seeing anybody even interested in empirically confirming or disproving it. I expect that from the left - you don't seek an empirical confirmation of your religion, you already know it's the true faith. But I would expect people on the right - and I mean all those talking heads, think tanks and high-flying politicians - be interested in figuring out whether DIE actually makes the army stronger - and if not, pushing that fact hard. I don't think I am seeing this. For the most of the 20th century, The Right sleep-walked into giving up almost every major societal institution to The Left's takeover, but I'd expect at least they'd put up some fight for the military. Doesn't seem to be the case. Is it that the only thing that can get people really caring nowdays is when a piss water manufacturer offends them? I'd say the military going woke is a bigger deal than piss water going woke, but I don't see the red tribe treating it this way.
As a Hegelian synthesis of the above, the third thought is that the barbarians should be, at least at the start, the least woke part of the society. Thus, them joining the army in large numbers (provided that indeed happens) should constitute at least a temporary impediment to the further assimilation of the military into the woke collective. However, again, I see very little interest - at least where I could observe it, maybe I'm not looking in correct places? - in the red-tribe thought to exploring this opportunity and building some kind of "welcome wagon" track to ensure these people will join the Right Side and vote accordingly once they become citizens. I am not sure how it should look like, but that's what these "think tanks" are for, aren't they? Do the thinking thing and figure it out. Or at least try - I don't see the trying, really. Am I wrong here?
I feel like most people who cite "Hard Times stronk men..." memes haven't actually read Gibbon. Because something they miss: It's an INCREDIBLY long fucking book, 795 pages in a Penguin edition on Amazon.
Barbarian recruitment started in earnest under Hadrian, who was definitely a top-10 Emperor. I don't recall exact dates for when barbarian recruitment began within his reign, but certainly by the end of his reign in 138 AD much of the border defense was handled by barbarian immigrants resettled in the Empire.
Depending where you lived, this was somewhere between 250 and 1200 years from the final end of the Roman Empire. Maximinius Thrax, who iirc was the first barbarian Emperor, ruled in 235 AD.
Barbarian recruitment still puts the US Empire potentially hundreds of years from collapse if you are lucky enough to live in the imperial core. Unless you live in the imperial core at a time of civil war, in which case you're more likely to get murdered in a power struggle anyway. And if you live in Armenia, you're likely to get traded back and forth to the Persians a dozen times regardless of how Rome is doing.
When we talk about historical cycles, we need to take account of what a reasonable career for an empire looks like. The majority of the Roman Imperial era was one of decline. If you go through and rank all the emperors, there weren't more than twenty good ones out of about 70 who held the title in Rome. Hell, out of the biblical kings of Israel, there were like four who (according to the bible) weren't complete shit, the Jews are still riding on that Saul-David-Solomon run of decent kings. Same story for France, HRE, Romanovs, Han, Ming, Qing, Ottomans. Competency is the exception. Human history is built off brief periods of empire building, followed by long periods of decline.
As an aside, I don't think we can call NATO seriously desperate in Ukraine until they start recruiting African legions on promises of EU visas for up to four members of their families if they serve a 3 year spell in Ukraine. Forget manpower problems. How many applications from 18-25 year old men do you think they could get if they opened up recruitment?
I didn't say it will happen tomorrow. But also, things tend to happen much faster in the modern era. I personally hope to be dead before the empire begins to collapse in an obvious way. But I do think we're somewhere in the "decline" path already.
NATO is doing its very best to avoid being a side of the conflict, for now (their explicit words, not mine) so I don't think this tells us much. But I don't want to get too deep into Ukraine matters here, it would be very distracting from the main points.
It seems such an obvious, and from the perspective of neoliberal elites cost-free, method to achieve the goal that to leave it on the table tells us something about seriousness. The EU accepts that a certain number of migrants from third world countries will arrive each year, and most EU elites seem to view this as a broadly good thing for the countries involved. Why not kill two birds with one stone?
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